We are just north of the Amazon Basin, riding a boat on the Ikabaru River. The passengers are people who buy gold and diamonds. They stop at each of the illegal mines that appear as craters on the river’s edge. They carry small weighing scales that seem very accurate, magnifying loupes, burners to melt the gold and separate the mercury, and some large spoons to collect it.

They are also carrying bags full of cash.

We are very close to the porous and at times imperceptible triple border between Venezuela, Brazil and Guyana. The area is remote and hard to access. Getting here takes a day of navigating along the river, or flying in one of the small planes that land on makeshift dirt landing strips. There are no roads.

To get here days before, we flew on a small Cessna over the area where the immense savanna and its table-top mountains meet the jungle.

The first landing was on a strip where a group of people were preparing a robust Antonov An-2 Soviet-era plane to carry supplies to the area of the mines.

There I spent a good portion of the morning talking to the pilot and waiting for the clouds to clear. He talked to me about the perils of having a plane with a carburetor, and the problems brought by constantly needing buckets of oil. His worries include the risks of landing in short, muddy landing strips carrying the 8+ tons weight of the plane when it is loaded with its cargo of gasoline barrels.

In the mining area, roads seem impossible. The dirt road ended on the dry bank of a river, with uneven stone walls, which we crossed in the vehicle.

After several hours driving in our 4X4 vehicle, we spotted a couple of men in the middle of a crater, working waist deep in the mud. They were removing the layers of vegetation with a pressure hose to reach the strata holding the “material,” which they call the rock that holds gold and diamonds.

The appeal of working in illegal mining is enormous. Four grams of gold equal an average monthly wage in Venezuela. An ounce of the metal goes for over $1700. The gold fever is understandable if we consider that an ounce used to sell for $250 ten years ago.

But in these mines, and the towns around them, life is expensive. A bottle of water costs around $12, and a 250-liter tank of gasoline, which would cost just $5 in the rest of the country, here goes for up to US$1,200. Venezuela is known for having the cheapest gasoline in the world.

Justin, 21, arrived on the back of a pickup to spend a season in the mine. He is a former army sergeant who once lost his rifle in the Caura River during a raid against illegal mining. When that happened, he made the decision to become a miner.

He traveled with another one he met that morning. They became friends quickly. “El Chino” is 20 years old, and he was “getting in” to be able to leave before Christmas. He is from Bolivar and said he was born in the mines.

Another miner, Juan Bola, 64, showed in his battered, bruised hands, a small piece of gold.

Those who can, work hard. They don’t know if they will be able to carry on. The government is threatening to clamp down on clandestine mining. Thousands of families and whole towns live off this activity, directly or indirectly.

To get to another mine we had to cross a river that was 196ft (60 meters) wide, with water up to the waist. The clearing made by the miners made it look as if someone had taken a bite out of the jungle. Some people were cutting trees while others, several feet below, were blasting away the jungle floor with a high pressure water hose. They were riding the hose as if trying to tame a wild anaconda.

The hose is very dangerous. Its pressure and its metal nozzle turn it into a lethal weapon for the miners who work barefoot, sunk in the mud. There are no doctors or medical assistance anywhere nearby. In recent weeks two miners died here in the morning and their colleagues were only able to recover their bodies by the next morning. Mudslides, snake bites and tropical diseases are frequent.

As the last stop, we reached Parkupik, from where I took the boat on Ikabaru River. In the plane to get here there were two Brazilians; the wives of two miners. One of them carried her two-month-old baby in her arms, in addition to food and mining tools. This indigenous community of around 100 families belonging to the Adventist Church, is the port where gold and diamonds are marketed in the area.

Kids played in the river next to their fathers, who were preparing their curiaras (canoes) to travel to the mines, while gold buyers spent the hot hours of the afternoon watching satellite TV in a hut that doubles as both warehouse and kitchen.

Days later, in a city nearby, a diamond buyer adjusted the gun on his waist while he greeted a miner who brought some “rocks.” He passionately explained that diamonds are the perfect currency. “You can carry thousands of dollars in the pocket of your pants without setting off any metal detector. There are no borders for them.”

In the mine, Ramón walked exhausted at the end of his workday. His face, ravaged by the sun, was sprinkled with mud. When he smiled, a golden “R” became visible, inlaid in one of his front teeth.

Before the recent election campaign in Venezuela, the last time that I had been close enough to Hugo Chavez to use a wide angle lens was last February when he left for Cuba to be treated for a recurrence of his cancer.  That farewell began as a solemn procession through the streets of Caracas, with Chavez dressed in black, riding in a dark van with open sunroof and an image of Christ on the windshield. His supporters showered him with flowers on the way to the airport, as he left his followers in suspended animation, and his future full of doubt.

This campaign was a re-encounter with him; one that many didn’t believe would happen again. His cancer disappeared from the agenda, and Chavez was back. For his followers it was the difference between night and day, or the idea of a Venezuela without him contrasted with his reappearance in power, where he had been for the last 14 years.

Whenever Chavez appeared the masses screamed wildly. If he were a boxer he would be an undefeated veteran, with many blows against him and without the same youthful agility, but with his own solid punch intact. To his faithful, Chavez remained the synonym of hope.

His motorcades turned into carnivals with salsa, merengue, and ritual drums sounding almost religious, where he received good wishes as well as petitions from the deafening noise and the sea of hands, through which his vehicle navigated each afternoon. At different times he pretended to play the electric guitar, joked on stage, surrounded himself with pop stars to become youthful for a few moments, only to finish by singing his favorite rancheras. One evening in Valencia, Chavez ended one energetic and emotional speech by flinging his microphone several meters to be caught by his aide-de-camp, leaving him triumphant like a bullfighter after the bull’s last pass.

Many women cried upon seeing him and used all their strength to force their way past the guards to reach him. For most it was impossible to do more than make visual contact, but it impressed me how Chavez seemed to make contact with each person as he passed them.

In the oil town of Cabimas on the shores of Lake Maracaibo, a crowd waited hours under a brutal sun in a temperature of 42C (108F). While first aid was given to those who fainted, the rubber soles of a government press officer melted on the pavement. As the motorcade carrying Chavez passed by, there was a group of aides alongside whose task was to pick up the letters that his supporters held out to him.

In Sabaneta, where he was born, we barely reached the motorcade starting point through the thousands blocking the highway in anticipation. Only by climbing onto the roof of a police pickup truck were we able to advance through the masses. Chavez toured Sabaneta with a microphone in his hand singing melancholically, “… I spent my childhood on your streets…” He greeted many people by name, “… I love you auntie… greetings Flor… friend, paint that wall… I was born in that house…” He turned the rally of masses into an intimate encounter.

In Yaritagua, in the heart of Venezuela’s plains, Chavez closed his eyes to sing the National Anthem with thousands of fans. Just minutes later, after a young villager spoke to welcome him to their town, Chavez invited him to sip coffee from a pewter cup right there on stage.

The closing rally in Caracas was under a rain shower of epic proportion, after which Chavez went on to win the October 7th election. I was left with the impression that he had won the support of a new generation of Venezuelans, including some who hadn’t even been born in 1992 when Chavez burst into the public eye with his failed coup attempt.

About a year ago, Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez surprised us during a routine coverage at his Miraflores palace in Caracas. He appeared with a walking cane.

That was the first time he had ever shown any hint of a physical problem, or indeed any notion of fragility. A few days after that, he left on a tour of Ecuador, Brazil and Cuba where he was hospitalized and received emergency surgery in Havana. Weeks later, Chavez confirmed that a malignant, baseball-sized tumor had been removed from his pelvis, and the saga began.

I’ve been covering Chavez for the last eight years – a long, grueling but utterly fascinating assignment for a photojournalist.

Chavez had always looked indefatigable. We got used to the massive crowds, the long emotional speeches, and the permanent campaigning. We followed him as he crossed the country far-and-wide. We ran behind him during strenuous tours where he invariably broke protocol and security, always witty and improvised. We learned to guess his mood from behind the camera.

Today, things are different. As he said the other day: “Unfortunately I won’t continue to be the same runaway horse.” The times have changed for him and for us.

SLIDESHOW: HUGO CHAVEZ’S CANCER BATTLE

In the last 12 months, the pace and nature of coverage has changed greatly. Surrounded by rumors about his health, Chavez has spent more than 100 days receiving treatment in Cuba, during a dozen different trips to Havana.

We’ve only had 50 opportunities to photograph him in the last year – whereas in the past he was out-and-about every day, often several times at several different places. We’ve only had seven chances to see him since his latest relapse in February when he announced a recurrence of cancer and the need for new surgery. So for images, we have mostly depended on the photo handouts from his press team. More than 100 scenes received by email or Twitter have served also as “proof of life” to stop waves of speculation and rumors.

Nevertheless, in spite of his physical absence, Chavez and his figure continue to be the center of attention for Venezuelans. He’s omnipresent. His image is everywhere on TV along with street graffiti and posters at political rallies or religious services held to pray for his recovery. Supporters wear his image on caps, badges and T-shirts. Above all, he’s always present in discussions and conversations that in some way or another, begin and end with him.

He’s become a symbol.

Now, we’re four months away from the October 7th election, and faced with covering an atypical campaign. Without a doubt, today more than ever, politics are synonymous with perception, and Chavez has to create an image that convinces voters he will be healthy enough to take on a new mandate.

Ever the wily politician, he knows that the impetus of his 13-year-rule and his still enormous personal popularity may be enough for his re-election. The fact that we don’t see him much campaigning on the streets is turning him into a “virtual” candidate.

Chavez remains the main source of information and pictures from his government-revolution, but he’s just not as accessible as in the old days.

Symbols of Chavez, and his physical presence or absence, will be the central topics during the electoral war that begins right now, a year into his battle against cancer.

It was during my eternal search for unique moments to capture that I was witness to the most spectacular and magical event – the arrival of a new life.

The United Nations announced the pending birth of the planet’s inhabitant number 7,000,000 for October 31, and that gave me the chance to work on a series of photos that became the most emotional and satisfying of my career.

The moment a baby is born is doubtless one of the most intimate and special in the life of a woman and her family, and sharing that intimacy as a privileged observer was sensational. To live that experience without having become a father yet was even more moving.

All emotions came to the surface during the birthing. The most intense pain together with the most tender caresses and great joy, all played together during the demonstration of tireless work and strength of the medical staff. They were images of the efforts necessary to give birth, and the struggle for integral health.

Inside the maternity services in Caracas I focused my story on the contrasting visions of the public health system called Barrio Adentro (Into the Shantytowns) run by doctors from the Cuban mission in Guatire, in the slums of Caracas, and that of the Aquamater Clinic, a private hospital specializing in underwater birthing in Caracas’ wealthier east.

In Aquamater births take time. I followed their work throughout the entire process, sometimes for more than ten hours under dim light and the music of choice of the mother-to-be. I photographed prenatal courses and practice sessions submerged in water. I was awoken at 4 am one day as a couple prepared for the real thing.

In contrast with Aquamater, it only took a few minutes at the Guatire maternity ward to witness the first mother giving birth, followed by another and another. The work there was nonstop, 24 hours a day, in a dozen birthing rooms that seemed like the stages for a ballet of synchronized blue robes.

Venezuela, with its nearly 30 million inhabitants, has taken on the goal of reducing infant mortality to 10.43 per thousand before 2015. In 1990 the mortality rate for children under five was 31.30. In 2010 it had already dropped to 15.98.

The fact that the world’s population has reached seven billion, without taking into account when and how we’re all born, should make us all reflect on the multiple challenges that we face as human beings on Earth. Each day life expectancy grows longer, but so does the gap between rich and poor, the threats to the environment, and the challenges of providing enough food and potable water to the world’s population.

I want to thank the mothers who gave birth, their husbands and companions, and the doctors and nurses with whom I shared this experience. Their efforts to protect life and health earned my maximum admiration and respect.

When I was invited to attend the screening of the movie “The Kid Who Lies” (El Chico que Miente) in the same village on Venezuela’s Caribbean coast where it was filmed, I had no doubt it would be a fantastic experience.

I could just imagine the excitement of its inhabitants seeing themselves and their familiar places on the big screen. But when I reached Ocumare I discovered that this was a place that hadn’t seen a movie screening since its last theater closed 40 years ago, and that this one would be truly special.

Friday night was warm as some 1,000 noisy ocumareños gathered in the social club along Bolivar Square. They filled the club with the sound of drums and the smell of coffee, sitting on plastic chairs and on the floor. Many stood along the walls, and others even poked their heads through the open windows. Nobody wanted to miss it.

“I never went to the movies before, and the first time I get to see one I’m in it,” oyster seller Argenis proudly told me. His smile brightened his deeply-tanned face. “My children are happy to see their father in a movie, even if it’s just for five minutes.”

“The Kid Who Lies,” directed by Peruvian Marite Ugas, is a road movie shot along the Venezuelan coast. It tells the story of a boy who was a victim of the 1999 Vargas tragedy, the worst natural disaster in Venezuela’s history where some 10,000 people died in landslides and floods, with thousands left homeless. Ugas was at the screening, and was especially anxious to see the reactions of her protagonists. She also wanted to use the event to thank the villagers’ hospitality.

Every time a familiar face or place appeared on the screen you could hear whispers, comments and laughter. It was a collective movie experience in the most unlikely of places, a fishing village surrounded by coffee farms.

After the show ended life returned to normal in Ocumare, but for Ramona Lartiguez, one of the chance actresses, remained the pride and recognition. Ramona, 76, plays the role of herself in the movie, singing the same song she sings every year to celebrate the Fiesta de San Juan, the most important celebration on Venezuela’s Afro-Caribbean coast. “I can’t remember the last time I saw a movie here in the village,“ she said. “We’re so happy they came to film here. I hope there’s a second part.”

I asked farmer Tomas Delgado about Ocumane’s last cinema just as he was leaving the club on his rusty bicycle. “The last movie theater we had nearby was in Cuboto, half an hour from here, that lasted until 1968,” he recalled. “It was on an old ranch brought by its owner. They showed Cantinflas and other black-and-white movies, but then television put an end to it. I used to steal chicken eggs from neighbors to sell them for one Bolivar, the price of a ticket.”

At times it seems that the quake was just yesterday. Many streets look more like the aftermath of a bomb than a natural disaster. During a religious mass to honor the victims in the country’s only soccer stadium, a speaker at the microphone asked all those who lost loved ones to raise their hands. The surge of rising hands sounded like the deep sigh of thousands.

A half-naked woman bathed in a mud puddle, looking ill, sad and homeless, offering a portrait of the country that suffers and whose cries for help haven’t reached enough ears.

The quake rubble seems the same as a year ago. That same dust from the broken buildings and unrepaired streets mixes with smoke from burning trash, giving the city a permanent cap of what looks like dusty smog reflecting the midday sun.

The days seem long in Haiti, with the sensation of “the day after.” Haitians still live a survival routine, waking up to the same nightmare for the past 365 days.

To a great number of people there are few defenses against the forces trying to shorten their lives – the cholera epidemic, malnutrition, and violence. The cholera bacteria which can be controlled with a little chlorine bleach, has already killed more than 3,750.

Today, the nation’s pride is a brave soccer team whose players are missing arms and legs lost in the quake. Many play on crutches. One player, Mackendy Francois, spoke of how he survived the quake by amputating his own leg to free himself from under the rubble.

Nights in the center of the city, the city of tents and homeless nights under the elements, are like a pitch-dark lion’s den a year after the day the world changed, when a quarter of a million lives were lost.

 
My first sensation was of absolute powerlessness; the pain, chaos and destruction were so overwhelming it seemed impossible to register it all. It was hard to know where to start, to find the exact words to describe everything that was happening and continues to happen. To translate all that it into images is a huge challenge.

 
I had never been in a tragedy of this magnitude, or seen anything close. Every day that passed we realized the dimension of the destruction was even greater. Every time I explored what was behind a wall, in a garden or a plaza, inside a field hospital or in the ruins of a house, there would be more children who urgently needed food and medicine, more desperate men and women with no hope for the future.

 
The whole city is an immense refugee camp without basic services, water, electricity, or toilets, that disappears at night in the darkness of ruins. There is the impression of statelessness, of an absence of institutions to help or oversee.
 
The extreme poverty of Haiti compounds the problem. An earthquake here may be worse than practically anywhere on earth, because the houses were constructed with cheap materials, on dangerous slopes, without building codes. There were no emergency services capable of responding.

 
Many people ask if journalists help in disasters. I don’t think we help directly. Our job is to trigger the response from institutions that do. This is what motivates us to come to these places, to point the eyes of the world toward people who are suffering and clamoring for help. We have to sensitize people to the situation through our pictures.

 
I don’t know if the worst is over. All those who have died or are missing represent a deep loss. But the real sadness and concern now revolves around the challenges to come for the survivors who will have to fight to keep going in a destroyed country, where the help that is arriving seems like a drizzle in the desert.

To view a full selection of images from Haiti click here.

Operation in Sanjaray

Embedded with the Canadian Army in Kandahar.

On May 16th I reached the forward operating base (FOB) after traveling in an convoy of armoured vehicles that left from Kandahar Airfield.

We set out from the FOB in a different armoured convoy traveling for a “secret cleaning operation” in Sanjaray village. I was told that the only condition for me to go was to not send pictures until the end of the operation.

We followed the tracks left by the tanks in the burning desert sand, surrounded by orange-colored mountains, until we reached an improvised base belonging to the Afghan National Police (ANA). This base offers a view of Sanjaray and the entire valley.

The Afghan soldiers based there don’t have electricity or running water, and they sleep on blankets stretched over the ground under a half-constructed building that still has no windows. We spent the night sleeping in the open next to the tanks.

The joint operation in which more than a thousand soldiers from Canada, the U.S. and Afghanistan were participating, was one of the largest ever carried out in this region considered to be rife with Taliban fighters.

At daybreak on the 17th we were already on the march into the valley. We watched the sun rise from behind the mountains as we entered Sanjaray. Our goal was to hike between three and four km each day, and thus cover the 12 square km in which the operation was focused.

The soldiers hiked for hours but advanced slowly with their backpacks weighing some 30-40 kilos. One other factor that determined their speed was the work of mine-sweepers that cleared the way ahead with the help of dogs.

The streets of Sanjaray, where the call to prayer is heard morning and night, are a capricious labyrinth of mud-brick, circular houses with not one straight line; no two windows or doors are the same size. No houses are alike but they all have their courtyards full of grape vines and cherry trees. Their fields abound in wheat and sorghum, as well as poppy and wild cannabis.

The landscape is biblical with waterholes, small streams, men with long beards walking their donkeys and children dressed in shirt-like robes. The mechanized soldiers with their high tech equipment are practically extraterrestrial.

The searches began early in houses and compounds that were on the soldiers’ list. At one house they found material to make homemade explosives (HEDs), and at another they arrested three men suspected of belonging to the Taliban, but they didn’t allow me to photograph them. I was told they were taken immediately to Kandahar.

We continued until noon checking courtyards, yards, stables and kitchens, and interrogated those present and asked about those family members that were absent. They took photos, climbed up to attics, jumped over walls, crossed rivers, and on and on. They stopped to rest often in the shade, and as the day went on they stuck closer to walls for cover.

At the end of the day we found a place to sleep, a narrow strip between cherry trees and a stream, where the village gives way to wheat fields. A Chinook helicopter landed to replenish our food and water. We had consumed five or six liters of water each after a day that peaked at 45 degrees Celsius.

The following day began a 4 am. In just a few minutes the soldiers had their sleeping bags rolled up, did a quick wash-up and swallowed some form of energy to begin the nine hours of hiking to come.

We crossed through plantations searching the mountains that crown the valley to the north. Helicopters flew overhead all day long as we hiked for hours together with an Afghan Army platoon working parallel to us. For hours we found nothing and nobody, crossing one river with water up to the waist and another by walking across a pipe that serves as a bridge.

The heat and lack of water finally made us stop, and a Chinook brought us more. We got ready to spend the night in what looked to be a quiet place, until we were ordered to sleep with our boots on.

I was told that the Taliban planned an attack for that night. Sure enough at around midnight I awoke to the whistle of rockets, but I couldn’t tell where it came from. A sergeant told me not to worry. If you could hear the rockets it meant they were aiming for someplace far, he said, because the rockets travel faster than sound.

More rockets followed and then came flares to light up the night for snipers, and that continued until almost daybreak. It was only later that I found out that the rockets were fired by the Canadians, and that we weren’t attacked. They told me that the Taliban had “decided to remain in hiding.”

A Chinook woke us at 5 am when it brought more supplies, landing very close to us and blowing towels and bags around the camp with its powerful rotors. We were ready for the final hike.

The second officer in charge of the operation assured me that it had been a success, with the best result being that all his men were unharmed. “We showed the Taliban that we can come and go whenever we want.” Even though they never showed their face.